Call centers are sites at which incoming customer phone calls, such as 800-prefixed calls, are received and answered by agents. Typically, each call center is staffed by agents associated with one or more skill groups or agents having experience with one or more types of applications. In this manner, a particular call may be routed to an agent having an appropriate level of expertise for handling the call. For example, an agent might belong to a skill group that services Spanish-speaking speaking callers and/or a group that handles sales calls.
Additionally, today's call centers are often no longer centralized in a single location. As a result, enterprises coordinate call centers across multiple physical sites. While workforce management software offers resource planning solutions, including forecasts of call volumes and arrival patterns, and staffing calculations based on desired service quality, a difficult issue in multisite call center integration is balancing call loads among multiple locations.
Workforce scheduling systems assign staff to respective work schedules periodically. Workforce scheduling systems may take into consideration forecasted customer demands, budgetary concerns (e.g., overtime), individual personnel skills and schedule preferences, staff availability at each call center site, and Federal Regulations (e.g., breaks). As the size of a workforce grows, so does the complexity of workforce scheduling systems.
Because of such complexity, workforce scheduling systems often does not have the flexibility, especially with regard to multiple call center locations, to be responsive to changing forecast conditions to meet dynamic customer demands efficiently.